Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Whilst it is rare that a Nokia phone should see the light of day before the Finnish manufacturer officially announces it, this was certainly the case with the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic which has been the subject of speculation for the best part of three months. Now, Nokia have finally lifted the lid on their next touchscreen phone and better still we managed to get an exclusive hands on playtest. Read on for our first impressions.

First things first, the built quality. Though the 5530 XpressMusic is billed as a sort of Nokia 5800 Lite, you certainly don’t get the impression Nokia have skimped on the production values. Comprised of a stainless steel case with plastic edges and a plastic battery cover, the 5530 has a reassuring weight to it despite measuring in at just 13 mm thick (2.5 mm thinner than its big brother). The stainless steel used on the front of the phone provides the perfect frame to the 2.9 inch display and, judging by the official press photos, looks even better in black. The slimmer dimensions and new materials used do help to deliver a sleeker device than the 5800.

The 5530 runs on the same Symbian OS as the 5800 (v9.4, series 60 release 5 in case you wondered) which means full compatibility with all of the 5800’s apps already available through the Ovi store. One new addition we did pick up on is the new scrolling contacts bar on the home screen. Basically, a bar sits at the top of the screen, above the Symbian short cuts, and lets you add your favourite or most frequently used contacts. Up to 20 can be added including support for photo contacts so you can show off how good looking your friends are.

The touchscreen comes in slightly smaller at 2.9 inches compared to the 5800’s 3.2 though this is the only major change with both featuring the same number of pixels, both utilising resistive touchscreen technology and both featuring handwriting recognition, an accelerometer and a proximity sensor which switches the screen off when the phone is held to your face (when you’re making a call). From our brief play, the touchscreen works just as well in this slightly more compact incarnation and because the the 5530’s touchscreen is resistive rather than capacitive, you can use a stylus for added accuracy, particularly effective when using the handwriting recognition software.

As a member of the XpressMusic range, the 5530 offers full support for the Nokia Music store (though it is as yet unconfirmed as to whether the phone will be bundled with the Comes With Music service). A 3.5mm audio jack sits at the bottom of the phone so you can use your own headphones and a built in music player with support for a wealth of file formats is nicely complimented by the iPod style Nokia music interface which gives you album art and nice big easy to use music controls that sit at the bottom of the touchscreen. And despite the slightly

meager 70MB of on board memory, the 5530 will take up to 16GB for literally thousands of audio tracks and hours of video playback.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to get any sample shots using the 5530’s built in camera, that’ll have to wait for our full review. It’s safe to assume that it will probably perform similarly to the 5800 as both use a 3.15 Megapixel camera capturing images at a maximum of 2048 x 1536 pixels and featuring a Carl Zeiss lens, Autofocus and an LED flash. Video capture should also mirror the performance found on the 5800 though this will be reviewed in full when we get our hands on the finished article for a dedicated review.

So, it’s all shaping up nicely for the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, any cause for concern? Well early rumours surrounding the 5530’s apparent lack of 3G connectivity have turned out to be true, so you’ll have to make do with Wi-Fi for high speed web access and standard GPRS when you’re not in a hot spot or wireless network. Disappointing, but all in the name of keeping costs to a minimum which should put the 5530 in line with similarly low cost touchscreen phones such as the hugely successful LG Cookie and the Samsung Tocco Lite. In a similar vein, the 5530 XpressMusic is also lacking GPS of any kind so those of you looking to get your navigation fix will need to look elsewhere. That goes for geo-tagging photos too, something recently made available to the 5800 in a recent software update.

And there you have it, whilst the lack of 3G and GPS might prove a stumbling block for some, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is shaping up quite nicely and if it can hit the right price point, can definitely challenge the current king of the low cost touchscreen’s; the LG Cookie. Set to launch in the UK in August, click here to register for updates and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available to order.

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